"This
isn't therapy," says David Milch to the writer he just hired to work on his
show "Deadwood." The writer in question is trying to decide upon the
name she will use while working for the show. She decides upon the name
"Emily Frasier," which she also has used when singing for a band.
"Emily Frasier" additionally has been known as "Speedie."
"Speedie" is the personal assistant of "JT LeRoy," a
celebrated, counter-culture author who burst on to the scene with his debut
novel Sarah in 2000. In case the
quotation marks aren't enough, none of these people, by the way, actually
exists.

Just a
bit of Milch's philosophy—that, first and foremost, writing is a job—might
have gone a long way to lessening the backlash that ensued when it was
discovered that LeRoy wasn't real in any legal or tangible sense. Instead of
focusing on the drama surrounding who is and isn't real, the press could have
looked at this tangled web as an interesting footnote to the work itself.
Milch's notion that writing isn't a primarily therapeutic practice might have
helped a bit for the person who created the "avatar" of LeRoy, as well
as "Emily Frasier" and "Speedie" and LeRoy's precursor
"Terminator," too.

The
problem is that Laura Albert, the woman behind LeRoy and company, was never too
interested in writing, until she discovered a doctor through a search for a
support hotline via the yellow pages. Albert told the doctor she was a teenage
boy who had suffered severe abuse, became a prostitute, and contracted AIDS. The
doctor suggested that the "boy" put his experiences and feelings into
writing. That's how it all began.

It all
ended in something of a literary scandal that made a good number of people,
including a few celebrities who adored and hyped LeRoy's work, feel, at best,
foolish and, at worst, betrayed. That's because, while people may not have fully
identified with the characters of LeRoy's writing, they certainly believed that
what they had heard about this poor kid's life was genuine.

Near
the end of Author: The JT LeRoy Story, Albert makes sure to point out that the
back cover of LeRoy's novel is clearly labeled as fiction. It comes across as
more of a legal disclaimer than anything else. She's also not a fan of the word
"hoax," which, to her, implies premeditation and malfeasance. Pressing
herself to describe what happened, she arrives at "accident."

Albert
is at the center of Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary, as she sits in front of a
screen to document the whirlwind events that turned her from an anonymous person
into an anonymous person who created a famous one. The rest of the story is told
by way of the bevy of taped phone conversations that she recorded throughout her
experience. The names on their own don't mean too much—Gus, Asia, Billy, Tom,
Courtney, Michael, Matthew—until we add the last names—Van Sant, Argento,
Corgan, Waits, Love, Pitt, Modine.

Albert,
donning the voice and personality of LeRoy, had lengthy conversations with a
good number of famous folks. They were enamored with the author's work. Some of
them wanted to make movies out of the writer's books, and others just wanted to
make sure that public readings of that work went well. They wanted to ensure
that they stayed true to the author's vision—completely unaware that neither
the author nor that vision was "true" in any literal sense of the
word.

Feuerzeig
also is clearly captivated by LeRoy, although his fascination at least has the
benefit of knowing the full story. That advantage does a lot to shape and color
his approach. The filmmaker's interest is not about the work, the real person
behind the avatars, or the legal and ethical concerns that this whole scenario
might raise. No, Feuerzeig is entranced by the whirlwind of fame itself,
especially how, in this case, the whole storm really did seem to be an accident
as far as he can tell, based solely on the word of someone who has a history
of—let's call it—distorting the truth.

There's
a rush to the way that Feuerzeig assembles Albert's narrative. He combines
photos, home movies of Albert's childhood (juxtaposing her descriptions of
misery with outward signs of happiness), audio recordings, headlines and news
reports, and animated depictions of LeRoy's writings. The momentum is
infectious. There's no denying that one kind of grows to admire the way Albert
and her confidants, who had to play multiple roles depending on the requirements
of becoming a public and popular entity, juggled the pieces of the unintentional
ruse.

At a
certain point, though, there's no denying that it becomes intentional, whether
or not Feuerzeig or Albert are willing to admit it. When it comes to matters
that go beyond Albert's basic narrative, Feuerzeig seems hesitant to probe any
further, as if the filmmaker is as overwhelmed by the presence his subject as
she was with the variety of famous people whom she came to know as LeRoy. The
result is that Author: The JT LeRoy Story
excels when it presents the facts (again, as far as we can tell) of the case,
but it fails to find or even look for any answers that would explain or
contextualize that story.